Cruise on down the highway

One of the issues with the GTO from day one was the fact that the cruise control appeared to be faulty.  I managed to get it working once, but that was it.

Paul over at MitsiArt thought it might be the air pump.  It works on suction to hold the speed (no idea how... lol)  and if the pump isn't pumping then no suction.  The problem with this was that a replacement new unit, if we could find one, would likely run us a significant cost.  Not something we really wanted to do for a non-critical system.  So that was that.

Then, the other day, after a bit of surfing, I came across a "genuine working cruise control pump, cables, and actuator" for just over £20.  Bam !  Buy it now, shipped and delivered...

The unit arrived today and was a pretty crazy mess of components, tubes, and bowden cables, so I set about installing it on to the car...  pics below

The box, direct from ebay

The compressor removed from the rest of the system

Before: note the proximity to the aircon pipes at the box :(

The actual unit comprises of several parts.  The pump (the broken bit), the actuator, and the pulleys (the bits in the box with the 3 pipes going into it), and the hoses and cables that link it all together..  The pump is mounted to the bottom of the pulley box so to get at it you have to basically pull it all out.

This is easier said than done as it is mounted in such a way that its butted up against the solid aircon pipes which are mounted in place.  Still, a bit of fiddling and swearing got it loose without affecting the A/C and it was a 2 minute job to swap the pump over.   

When returning the unit to its mounting place, I decided that it would be better to route the cables the other side this time so that its easier to get everything in / out if required.

After.... nothing spectacular has change really...

Except the cable mounts for the pump and the power steering reservoir sensor 

 Total job time, less than 30 minutes (including prep and clean up), and about 20 quid in parts.   Job done !  :)

Electronics and woodwork

The back end of Saturday and most of Sunday saw us spending time sorting out the electronics in the car, as well as flattening, and prettifying the rear seat area.

Due to the location of the cigarette lighter, the horrific mess of cables inside the dash, and the load we are likely to put on the system, we figured it was best to get run some dedicated power directly from the battery.  Easier said than done.

The intention was to get a separate fused spur for each key system.   So radio / CB / satnav, etc.  We could have just "T"ed everything into one feed and had local fusing, but that can lead to complications, and co-locating all the fuses was simpler.

Its not all 100% complete, but here are some pics of our progress so far.

The green and yellow "earth" cable you can see in this pic is actually the primary +12v cable direct from the battery to the radio, un-fused.  This is clearly rubbish, not only from a colouring standards point of view, but also the cable was low grade, and badly routed.  As you can see from the second pic, it is sitting on top of the peddles and generally getting the way.  We decided this need to be recitfied....  but first the boot.

Chipboard, circular saws, nail guns, glue and carpet.  What more could you want :)

We now have a nice flat loading area behind the front seats, and it looks much better than.  There's some insulation under the board to help with sound dampening, which is lifting it up a bit so might need to see if we can secure the whole unit in place.

Gregg doing his best James Herriot impression, arms well up inside the car

The offending "earth" cable, on its way out (along with decent cables being re-laid in its place)

If you look carefully in the middle you can see the new fusebox mounted to the back of the center armrest.

Tools everywhere...

Emergency tea break, complete with Swedish gingerbread men

Fitting some switches to the space in the radio fascia

The new center console illuminations, along with some switches, and now all properly wired.

I can see clearly now...

AutoGlass came out on Saturday to replace the cracked front windscreen.  Thankfully it was a blazing sunny day, so it all went very smoothly.  Pics below.

The shiny new screen ready to go into the car

Door trim removed

Using a wire to cut through the old bonding agent

No more screen !

It seems that the previous owner has removed all the front speakers,

both the doors and tweeters are missing.

If anyone knows what this thing does, let us know.  Ignore the cracked plastic :)

Just tidying up, and prepping the surface.

New glass, ready to rock around Europe :)

More magic worked....

So as I mentioned in the previous update, we had some concerns following the run.  Oil pressure and noises being the key ones.   To get to the bottom of this the car went back to MitsiArt.

Back in the workshop for some fixxoring

After taking her out for a run, Paul thinks that the noises aren't anything to be concerned about.  The whine is likely just the AWD doing its thing.  This is kind of what I suspected, but its always good to get a professionals opinion. He couldn't replicate the vibrations, so this is something we just need to keep an eye on.  I will try and narrow it down this week but if not we will just have to run with it as time is running out to find a fix.

Oil pressure was a concern due to the apparent lack of oil, however after resting on the flat for a period of time, it seems that the oil has returned so it may just have a lot of nooks and crannies and need a longer rest period than we gave it.  Still, we intend to take a few litres of 10w40 with us, just in case.

Something else that he has resolved for us is the seat movement issue.   The passenger seat wouldn't budge due to a misplaced cable retainer, which has now been re-seated (no pun intended).  And Paul has managed to re-locate the seats back approximately 2 inches to take up the slack between the front seats and the rear "seats".  Seeing as we will be flatting out the back for better cargo space, we don't need to allow for any legroom behind the driver, but more in front is very useful.

Mid-bodge, the car in various states of disassembly :)

The brackets made to allow the seats to sit further back.

(note this one will be re-done so it offers better grip)

Remaining jobs are:

• Flatting out the rear seats for cargo space
• Sorting the electronics
• Sorting the cockpit storage
• Rigging some cameras
• Sorting tents (and doing a test rig / de-rig)
• Doing a test load-out
• Getting more sponsorship monies !!

Some thoughts on the test run

The test run was intended to give us an idea of what the full run would be like, without leaving us stranded in the middle of some random European country without the things we need.  I think this was a reasonable success, and did highlight a few shortcomings, but lets look at the good side first.

The packing stage was relatively straight forward. We loaded the cars up with pretty much everything we would need for 5 days in euro land to get an idea for how packed the cars would be.. the answer... reasonably.

The Cougar of our co-team Axels-of-evil has a cavernous boot; however it was filled half full before even starting with 4 MR2 wheels that Mike J was taking to an ebay seller up north (who turned out to be none other than Team Gavlars brother!) on the way back from the test run.  Ignoring that, they would easily have had enough room for a pile more stuff without too much issue.

The GTO in comparison was a bit more snug.   Not rammed to the gills (we could still see out the back) but pretty well stocked.  We will need to take a bit of time refining what we actually need to take, and maybe drop a few things we don't really need, just to make things a bit more straight forward.

The seating position for the GTO was, surprisingly  "ok" for the long run.  I think it could still do with an extra inch of legroom, but if we can't manage that by moving the seats back, then I think we can cope.

So that's the positive aspects, now for the problems we encountered.

First off... Stuff we forgot.  We need to make sure we do a list of stuff to take and make sure its double checked before we roll on the Wednesday (ideally well before then).  We neglected to take pillows, towel, snacks for the road, camera tripod, and probably a few more things.   We will try and get all this ready for "load-out test weekend".

The passenger seat position is ok, but legroom etc mean that some times knees contact the dashboard a bit too closely, and feet get stuck underneath.  For a 5 day trip... I think we need to at least look at this, see if we can do something about opening it up a bit.

One of the biggest annoyances was storage.  The car has quite a few storage locations, but none of them are convenient.  We regularly required somewhere to stash things like the CB mic, camera, wallet, drinks, pens, etc...   so I think we may be fabricating a storage bin array to bolt on to the dash.

Power was also a small issue.  Currently the +12v power for the CB is pulled from a truly shocking "earth" cable installation.  We will pull a decent 8awg cable direct from the battery and run a few fused feeds from that for things like sat nav, phone chargers, laptop, cameras etc.

Physically, the car ran OK, but we did spot some areas for concern.  At motorway speeds there is a noticeable whine and vibration.  This doesn't appear to be wheel / tyre related as dropping the clutch eliminates it, so it must be something nearer the engine.

A brief chat with the guys at MitsiArt suggests it could be a bearing on its way out, which would require an expensive rebuild of the gearbox, transfer box, or diff....  not ideal.  Hopefully its functional enough to last another 3+k miles.

Lastly oil levels and pressure.  Originally, when we got the car, the oil pressure was a little low.  After the service, this returned to a sensible level, only to drop back off quite quickly.   Looking online, it appears that the GTO pressure gauge is less than reliable, so the actual reading isn't something that is worrying me, however combined with an apparent lack of oil in the engine (as seen on the dipstick) there is cause for some concern.  It may be this is directly related to the vibrations, in which case taking a load of oil with us may be the solution.   The car has been dropped off at Mitsi again for another look over (as well as a few little bits we found), so we shall see what they say.

Phew...   Big update... stay tuned for more shenanigans.

Test run, day 2

We have a bit more wordage this time as I am blogging this from home.   Before I get in to that, lets have a look at some of the Day 2 pics:

The morning pack-up (and figuring out how to de-rig a tent)

Re packing the car wasn't quite as tidy as it was originally, but not too bad.

It did rain in the night, more on that later...

Dat bacon ! hmmmm

Breakfast of champions :)

Christ on a bike... sunshine !

This is the end...

Welcome to Blackpool  "pleasure" beach.

The grim north :)

Mike is less than impressed with the locale

Fish and chips at an English seaside resort, a classic combo.

What wonderful weather we are having.

Maybe I wont go for a dip after all...

So as you can see, not fantastic weather, could have been better, but also could have been a lot worse.

The over night stay at the camp-site wasn't too bad.  We were forecast torrential rain, but there were only a few medium showers over night.  The down side...?

Well it looks like the "pitch and go" tents that Gregg and I opted for are more "pitch and go to the hotel".  Advertised as having 230cm of sleeping space (lengthways) and capacity for two people, these tents are nothing of the sort.  Bearing in mind that they are single skinned, so touching the outside will result in water seeping in, I had to crunch up to a full foetal position to avoid contact with the tent skin.  Even then I was still touching.  The problem lies in their shape.  A trapezoidal cross section means that the "full height" area is probably not much more than 1m long, and it slopes at about 45° down to the base.  Net result, once you add an air bed and pillows and body thickness of a full adult, you little more than 1.5m to "sleep" in and you cant move, or you get wet.  Side to side space isn't much better either.


Also, to top it off, both tents leaked.  Quite badly too.  During one of the heavy showers, I was getting "rained" on inside the tent.  Come the morning, there was a puddle of water about 10"-15" across in the bottom of both tents.

Due to this internal rain, I ended up de-camping all my kit into the shower block.  As we were the only, and first, people on site, this wasn't a problem as everything was clean and dry, but this is an issue for the run proper.  We will be re-visiting the tent situation asap.  Probably going for a much larger option.

So the night-time debacle over and done with, and following a rather tasty breakfast of smoked bacon baps, and a cup of tea, on Mike and Adams camp cooker we set off to go for a run around the "Evo Triangle".  This is a set of 3 roads praised by Evo magazine for their excellent driving characteristics, and I have to say they are spot on with this.  It is a combination of a windy country B road, a minor A road, and a major A road.  All roads offer spectacular views across the moorland (although we couldn't see most of them due to the weather) and more importantly you can see plenty of the road ahead as there are no hedgerows or buildings blocking your view.  This meant that you can take the apex of the corners without fear of oncoming traffic.

After a very "spririted" drive around here for an hour or so, we headed on to the grim north.  Blackpool specifically.  Unfortunately the weather followed us and as you can see from the photos, Mike was less than impressed with the whole situation.  A quick lunch, and a wander to the beach for a few pics, and just to say we had been, it was back into the cars for the run home.

On the way we stopped to drop off a delivery to an ebay buyer who was buying some wheels off of Mike.  It turns out he is related to a member of Team Gavlar from last years run, and he also took part in his own team.  This was a total coincidence as the ebay auction was in no way related to the run.  Small world.

Anyway, after that small tid-bit of frivolity it was motorway all the way, this run was largely uneventful, but there are a few little points about the car we need to look into.

So that's it, test over.  I will post a review of the important details shortly.

Some pics from the test flight trip to Wales... Day 1

Breakfast stop at Micks Monster Burger before the run..

Objects in mirror are LOSING !

I think this counts as mildly moist...

Which way is wales again ?

Following our other team "Axels of Evil" into the unknown

Here be dragons... literally!

Glamour shot, with free welsh mud :)

The camp site.  We were the only ones there.  Probably with good reason.